McTeague by Frank Norris (leveled readers TXT) 📕

himself comfortably in his chair. The smoke of his cheap tobacco drifted into the faces of the group at the adjoining table, and Marcus strangled and coughed. Instantly his eyes flamed.

“Say, for God’s sake,” he vociferated, “choke off on that pipe! If you’ve got to smoke rope like that, smoke it in a crowd of muckers; don’t come here amongst gentlemen.”

“Shut up, Schouler!” observed Heise in a low voice.

McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack. He took his pipe from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his lips moved, but he said no word. Marcus turned his back on him, and the dentist resumed his pipe.

But Marcus was far from being appeased. McTeague could not hear the talk that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder. Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion’s coat sleeve, but Marcus swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague, cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise:

“All I know is that I’ve been soldiered out of five thousand dollars.”

McTeague gaped at him, bewildered. He removed his pipe from his mouth a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of trouble and perplexity.

“If I had my rights,” cried Marcus, bitterly, “I’d have part of that money. It’s my due⁠—it’s only justice.” The dentist still kept silence.

“If it hadn’t been for me,” Marcus continued, addressing himself directly to McTeague, “you wouldn’t have had a cent of it⁠—no, not a cent. Where’s my share, I’d like to know? Where do I come in? No, I ain’t in it any more. I’ve been played for a sucker, an’ now that you’ve got all you can out of me, now that you’ve done me out of my girl and out of my money, you give me the go-by. Why, where would you have been today if it hadn’t been for me?” Marcus shouted in a sudden exasperation, “You’d a been plugging teeth at two bits an hour. Ain’t you got any gratitude? Ain’t you got any sense of decency?”

“Ah, hold up, Schouler,” grumbled Heise. “You don’t want to get into a row.”

“No, I don’t, Heise,” returned Marcus, with a plaintive, aggrieved air. “But it’s too much sometimes when you think of it. He stole away my girl’s affections, and now that he’s rich and prosperous, and has got five thousand dollars that I might have had, he gives me the go-by; he’s played me for a sucker. Look here,” he cried, turning again to McTeague, “do I get any of that money?”

“It ain’t mine to give,” answered McTeague. “You’re drunk, that’s what you are.”

“Do I get any of that money?” cried Marcus, persistently.

The dentist shook his head. “No, you don’t get any of it.”

“Now⁠—now,” clamored the other, turning to the harnessmaker, as though this explained everything. “Look at that, look at that. Well, I’ve done with you from now on.” Marcus had risen to his feet by this time and made as if to leave, but at every instant he came back, shouting his phrases into McTeague’s face, moving off again as he spoke the last words, in order to give them better effect.

“This settles it right here. I’ve done with you. Don’t you ever dare speak to me again”⁠—his voice was shaking with fury⁠—“and don’t you sit at my table in the restaurant again. I’m sorry I ever lowered myself to keep company with such dirt. Ah, one-horse dentist! Ah, ten-cent zinc-plugger⁠—hoodlum⁠—mucker! Get your damn smoke outa my face.”

Then matters reached a sudden climax. In his agitation the dentist had been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last time thrust his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his lips to reply, blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schouler’s eyes. Marcus knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden flash of his hand; it spun across the room and broke into a dozen fragments in a far corner.

McTeague rose to his feet, his eyes wide. But as yet he was not angry, only surprised, taken all aback by the suddenness of Marcus Schouler’s outbreak as well as by its unreasonableness. Why had Marcus broken his pipe? What did it all mean, anyway? As he rose the dentist made a vague motion with his right hand. Did Marcus misinterpret it as a gesture of menace? He sprang back as though avoiding a blow. All at once there was a cry. Marcus had made a quick, peculiar motion, swinging his arm upward with a wide and sweeping gesture; his jackknife lay open in his palm; it shot forward as he flung it, glinted sharply by McTeague’s head, and struck quivering into the wall behind.

A sudden chill ran through the room; the others stood transfixed, as at the swift passage of some cold and deadly wind. Death had stooped there for an instant, had stooped and past, leaving a trail of terror and confusion. Then the door leading to the street slammed; Marcus had disappeared.

Thereon a great babel of exclamation arose. The tension of that all but fatal instant snapped, and speech became once more possible.

“He would have knifed you.”

“Narrow escape.”

“What kind of a man do you call that?”

“ ’Tain’t his fault he ain’t a murderer.”

“I’d have him up for it.”

“And they two have been the greatest kind of friends.”

“He didn’t touch you, did he?”

“No⁠—no⁠—no.”

“What a⁠—what a devil! What treachery! A regular greaser trick!”

“Look out he don’t stab you in the back. If that’s the kind of man he is, you never can tell.”

Frenna drew the knife from the wall.

“Guess I’ll keep this toad-stabber,” he observed. “That fellow won’t come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too.” The group examined it with intense interest.

“Big enough to let the life out of any man,” observed Heise.

“What⁠—what⁠—what did he